Love Not Blind
by BD the Pixie
Summary: ... To summarize this would be... Weird. So just read it. .-


This idea came to me and wouldn't let go. . . So here you have it. ^.-  
  
Love Not Blind  
  
A blue-haired ferry girl slid on her sandals, walked out from her bedroom and into a large room. Ogre-type creatures of various color bustled about, calling names and waving around papers excitedly. The girl giggled to herself at how much work ethic they had (though in reality, it was fear of the ruler's wrath that scared them into such a frenzy). She opened another door into a smaller (but still compensatively large) room. There, a young boy was seated on a gigantic chair, multitasking between stamping and signing at paperwork and looking up at an enormous television-like screen. The boy himself was small, appearing to be around the age of four or five. Thus explaining why his things were so . . . compensative. The girl greeted him,  
  
"Koenma-sama, ohayo! Ogenki des'ka?"  
  
"Hai," he replied, not really paying attention. "Anata wa?" he mumbled after a moment, having found his manners.  
  
"Hai!" The girl smiled bouncily. The boyish deity looked to his side a minute, and a blue ogre walked tentatively to him, handing him a telephone. Its technology advanced, it had a small screen on it. Koenma took the phone and looked into the screen,  
  
"Moshi-moshi?"  
  
The person on the other end of the line spoke back, their voice unintelligible from where the girl stood.  
  
"Hai, wakarimasu. Ja mata!" Koenma gave the phone back to the ogre and looked at the girl.  
  
"Dou shimashita ka, Koenma-sama?" the girl asked.  
  
"We're having company, Botan." Koenma replied unenthusiastically. "Nothing's wrong."  
  
"Eigo?" Botan asked.  
  
"Yes. My aunt recently passed away, we're watching her children. She lived in America, so they speak English."  
  
"That's just awful!"  
  
Koenma nodded grimly. "They should be here in a few hours. I had Ayame take over your duty today."  
  
"Arigatou, Koenma-sama. I'll get ready." She went back to her room and picked up her own phone. She dialed a few numbers, and put the phone to her ear. Thankfully the other line was picked up.  
  
"Moshi-moshi. . .?" was the sleepy answer.  
  
"Yusuke-kun!" Botan gushed happily. "Ogenki des'ka?"  
  
"Hai, anata wa. . .?" Yusuke mumbled, running on autopilot.  
  
"Watashi wa genki."  
  
"Nan des'ka?" Yusuke asked, slightly irritated at having been woken up. Botan explained to him that they were having company, the children of a deceased relative of Koenma-sama's. She invited him to come and meet them with her.  
  
"Hai. Ja ne!" Yusuke hung up. Botan set down the phone happily and then remembered that the children spoke English. Oops.  
  
A few hours later, Yusuke walked into the little office where Koenma was seated. Beside him was a young woman, standing politely beside his desk.  
  
"Oi!" Yusuke called to Botan and Koenma. He turned to the girl. "Ore wa Urameshi Yusuke. Hajimemashite yoroshiku."  
  
"S-sumimasen, wakarimasen," the girl said tentatively, her head down.  
  
"Watashi no Nihongo wakaru?" Yusuke asked her dumbly. Koenma answered for her,  
  
"Iie. Eigo."  
  
Botan smiled. "I can teach you to say some things to him, okay?"  
  
"Okay," the girl answered.  
  
"Tell him your name. Watashi wa. . . and then your name, des'." Botan instructed. Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Bakana. . ." Koenma shook his head in disappointment to remind Yusuke that this girl had lost her mother.  
  
"Watashi wa Mezumi des." Mizumi mumbled nervously, not looking up at him.  
  
"Sou," Yusuke said. "Anata wa Nihon-jin des'ka?"  
  
Koenma answered for her again. A complicated translator process they had going on here. "Hai."  
  
"Yusuke-kun," Botan interrupted, "Would you like to go to Japan and take Mezumi-chan out for awhile? I have the day off."  
  
Yusuke tapped his foot impatiently. "WAKARIMASEN YO!" Yusuke yelled.  
  
Botan laughed nervously. "Silly me." A smaller, younger girl walked in.  
  
"Find the bathroom all right, sweetie?" Botan asked.  
  
"Mm-hmm," the girl nodded and ran to her sister. "Mezumi! I want mommy . . ."  
  
"Mezumi reached down and touched her sister's face. She felt tears. "Don't cry." She pulled a stick from behind her leg and felt her way across the room. She found a chair that had been placed there for her, and sat in it. Letting her stick drop to the floor, she let the child climb into her lap. "It's okay, Chiharu."  
  
Yusuke blinked quizzically, and pointed questioningly to Mezumi. Koenma and Botan both nodded. The boy went home a few minutes later, thinking about Mezumi and her sister. He decided to pay a little bit more attention in his English class, so he could understand her a little.  
  
Botan arranged for herself, Yusuke, and Mezumi to meet at a park near Yusuke's house.  
  
"I've never been to Japan," Mezumi walked down a trail through the park. "I smell flowers," she commented.  
  
"Mm-hmm!" Botan smiled. "Cherry blossoms. Sakura."  
  
"Sakura," Mezumi repeated. Yusuke walked up.  
  
"Oi!" he announced himself. Botan led them both to a bench, and the three of them sat down. Botan asked Yusuke if he'd like to help Mezumi learn Japanese.  
  
"What're you saying?" Mezumi asked tentatively. Botan answered,  
  
"I asked him if he'd teach you Japanese."  
  
Mezumi and Yusuke both resisted a minute, Mezumi insisting that she was okay with a translator and Yusuke insisting he didn't want to. Botan got a call from Koenma, saying that she needed to come back (the ogres were having a riot over the backup of souls, as Ayame didn't make as good a ferry girl as Botan).  
  
"Please, try to learn from him," Botan said. Then she pulled out her oar and flew off. Yusuke was startled a minute, knowing people weren't allowed to see that sort of thing. It soon came back to him that there was nobody around, and Mezumi was blind.  
  
They sat in silence a minute, and Mezumi sighed. She wondered if she'd been abandoned, though asking if he were still there would sound dumb. Dumb and useless, he didn't understand English. She remembered having spoken Japanese a long time ago, before moving to America. They'd moved so that when Chiharu was born, she'd have an American way of life, every foreign parent's dream.  
  
A lone cherry blossom blew over to them, carried on the wind. It landed on Mezumi's hand. She picked it up and smelled it. "Aah, smells so nice . . . sakura . . .?" she asked, trying to remember the word.  
  
"SA-ku-ra." Yusuke corrected her pronunciation.  
  
The girl smiled, letting the flower fall gracefully to the ground. Yusuke didn't know any English, so he just talked to her slowly in Japanese. She liked the sound of the tongue, and some of the phrases came back to her. She repeated after him for a long time, until it started to get dark. Then he walked her back to Reikai.  
  
"Aah, Mezumi-chan. Nice to see you back."  
  
"Mm-hmm," she murmured. Botan took her hand and led her to a bedroom near hers, which she would share with Chiharu.  
  
Over the next couple of weeks, Chiharu and Mezumi were smiling a lot more. Mezumi had learned her way around the offices at Reiki, and wasn't using her stick anymore so much as her hands. Chiharu was intrigued at the way the ogres did their work, and followed them around endlessly. They enjoyed the little company, and didn't mind that she was always underfoot.  
  
Meanwhile, Yusuke had continued to teach Mezumi some Japanese. Botan had to tell Mezumi what Yusuke was saying. Botan told Yusuke that he didn't have to continue this if he didn't want to, but he insisted that he had nothing better to do. He was picking up a little English, too, both from the lessons with Botan and Mezumi and from school, where he'd been paying more attention.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Yeah. Short.  
  
Don't worry. Mezumi-chan can understand a spot of Japanese now, so there'll be no more of that. Just know that everybody's speaking Japanese unless stated otherwise.  
  
I was going to add translations but I'm really, really lazy. And it's not hard to figure out. Oo'  
  
~Ryuu 


End file.
